Dungeons & Dragons – Page 3 – the coffee philosopher

Posted on March 2, 2013February 27, 2013 by the coffee philosopher

My World Begins

There are some holes in my world, the one I created for the Dungeons & Dragons game I am DM’ing. I admit it. So shoot me. Or don’t and keep reading.

Finian (a deft halfling thief), Teague (an incautious and potty mouthed singer and poet), and Regdar (a lifelong military man) start out as low level officers on a semi-important island within a distinctly unimportant empire.

Having created a world on my own and having done so in a somewhat haphazard fashion (I had a draft in my head, but not much more than that), it put the players at the awkward disadvantage of not really knowing as much about the world they were in as they really should have. I’ve tried to fix that over time, but that’s also been haphazard.

Below is the intro to the small part of the world where I dropped them:

The Sunward Empire is a series of twenty-seven islands, ruled by gnomish sorcerer, the Sunward Emperor. His wife (by tradition) is the Windward Priestess, a human. Together, they are not just the ruling secular authority, but also the head of the national religion, which worships the sun (Kaji) and the wind (Raag). In matters of secular governance, the Sunward Emperor leads, and the Windward Priestess in matters of religion. However, the Emperor is also a religious figure and the Windward Priestess a figure with real secular authority. They are not, typically, referred to by their names, however, their names (Verkef and Alriat, respectively) are widely known. The Sunward Emperor and Windward Priestess are chosen a college of gnomish arcanists and a college of human clerics, respectively. The gnomish and human cultures dominate the Sunward Empire.

No one island is more than a day from its nearest neighbor and the Empire can crossed by boat (in good weather) is ten days, east to west, and five days, north to south. The islands are in the middle of (usually) calm ocean, between the western continent of Loe and the eastern continent of Goa. The Empire, as a whole, is self sufficient, but regular trade does come from the peoples of the two continents, but little is known about the civilizations of either (technologically, most of the traders seem to come from cultures that resemble the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian civilizations of the late bronze and early iron ages).

The empire is peaceful and mulitcultural. The dominant groups are gnomes and humans, but there are large populations of dwarves and elves and halflings.

Each island is jointly governed in local matters by an appointed governor and council whose makeup is determined by local traditions (some are reasonably democratic, but most are de facto group of the heads of leading families).

The characters are based on the westernmost island, call the Throughward Isle. The island council is made up of a group of leading citizens. When someone dies, the remaining figures pick his replacement (this council has no females and is fairly chauvinistic), almost always from amongst the oldest families or leading merchants. The council has two factions: one is led by an elf named Aelat and the other by a halfling named Anderaz. The governor is a human named Maloud and is also the commander of the imperial garrison, consisting of about forty soldiers. The garrison is larger than most (except for the capital island of Hazakis) in order to be able to send half or more on expeditions to act as marines.

In addition to being a significant trading location, Throughward Isle also has the largest iron mine in the Empire.

The characters are officers in the garrison. They may either be native to the island or have recently been transferred. The commanding officer (Maloud) and most of the garrison are human.

Posted on February 26, 2013February 22, 2013 by the coffee philosopher

The Continuing Saga Of Dungeon Master Coffee Philosopher

We’re still doing it. DM’ing an original Dungeons & Dragons campaign. We’ve even added a new player, a friend of mine of several years who looks likely to hang around for a while (I think he was reassured that everyone in our little cabal is over thirty-five and has a professional career).

I worked up a plot of sorts and have a broad idea of where that plot will lead. But I was never great at plotting, so it’s nice that the party has taken off and done their own thing. Abetting that, I’ve tried to insert a certain randomness into the mix – mainly through the cheap trick of die rolls that select a random encounter from list, which list sometimes also includes key plot points, thereby encouraging folks to go off on tangents that I hadn’t ‘planned’ to happen yet.

As you can see, I’m still somewhat obsessed with limiting the ‘directedness’ of the game – not directing the players don’t the paths I want.

Have I ever explained what’s going on?

No?

Maybe tomorrow.

Posted on December 31, 2012December 31, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

Posted on December 28, 2012December 28, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

It’s A Learning Experience

Player's Handbook The last time I wrote about my D&D’ing, I said that making the characters roll straight 3d6 in order was a mistake. And I sort of still agree, but I am seeing some benefits – the players are very aware that their characters are relatively powerless.

This has created a situation which has made things interesting, in that the characters are fairly wary of engaging and are more likely to find ways to avoid combat. While it’s caught me off guard a couple of times, it has added an element of randomness to the game that I like, the randomness, for me, creating a sort of naturalism.

Of course, as the characters rise in level, that’s changing a bit… I may have to pit them against something really brutal…

I am still struggling, I fear, to paint a clear picture of the world. Partly, this is because I am not very good at drawing maps that could provide an overview of what the world looks. I did do one map, but it was laughably simplistic and bad. Simplistic, in that was I was clearly trying to paint over my inadequacies with crudeness. And bad, because, well, it was bad.

The consequence of this is that the players don’t have as clear a picture of the world their characters exist as they should.

I sometimes fear I am making the ‘plot’ too complicated. Partly, I have gone somewhat overboard in creating options. Having been too directed, at first, I go into each session with, in essence, at least three different adventures for the players to choose from.

The last time we played, I allowed a random dice roll to let them explore a tomb that opened up a whole bunch of plot options. This absence of direction, I think, sometimes makes it difficult for the players to keep up with what’s going on and who’s connected to who. But, then again, maybe that’s how life is?

Posted on December 22, 2012December 22, 2012 by the coffee philosopher · 1 Comment

“Mistakes Were Made…”

Our little band of D&D’ers (fourth edition, to be specific) first got together sometime in 2010. I think. Maybe it was 2009. Let’s just say “over two years ago” and call it close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, shall we?

I got very lucky. I was in my mid-thirties (and am now closer to forty than thirty) and had heard horror stories of men my age walking into games filled with angst and acne ridden teens. Actually, not so much “stories” as a single story related to me by my friend Ryan, who is also my sci-fi/fantasy friend (sort of like I also have my “soccer buddy” and “politics friends”).

There were six of us to start with: three hard core gamers (including the DM); one sitting somewhere between journeyman and master player; and a newbie. And me, who was skating by on memories of playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (and also Star Frontiers – anyone remember that game? highly underrated) back when there was such a thing and when the whole franchise was owned by TSR and no one had heard of a company called “Wizards of the Coast.”

We played in the post-apocalyptic desert world of Athas. I was a half-elf mage named Cavafy (so named after the great poet and chronicler of Alexandria’s demi-monde). Players came and left. One left, ostensibly to become a DM somewhere else, but mostly, I think, out a certain frustration with the less experienced players (no doubt including myself). Another became a new father. A third’s (the truest newbie) heart simply wasn’t in it. We added a new player, a congressional staffer who, like me, was able to draw on memories of playing as a younger man, when we all had more hair.

As a wannabe writer, ideas kept rolling around in my head for a campaign of my own – an opportunity for me to take on the sacred mantle of Dungeon Master and show off my imagination (which, as I learned, was exactly the wrong way to look at it).

I broached the matter with our DM and (still) de facto leader of our band who, agreed, in theory, to let me try my hand for one or two sessions. But the right moment didn’t arrive until suddenly, it did.

A proper moment in the lives and schedules of both our real selves and our characters emerged simultaneously and we shelved the old world and picked up a new one. Mine.

And I had so many ideas. Too many actually.

It is not, I found, like writing a short story. It is more, to dip into what I’ve learned in my former and sometimes profession, more like managing a political campaign: you’re going try something, but you know there will always be a reaction from the other side and a you’ll be surprised by it a significant portion of the time.

For example, I grew enamored of the idea of “natural rolls.” By which I mean, the players roll their ability scores the very old fashioned way: 3d6 in order. Then, they would create a character based on the randomness of the scores they got, rather than shaping to scores to the kind of character they wanted to play.

Which was cool in one way. It forced the players to get out of some preconceived notions of what they wanted to be and experiment with something they maybe hadn’t expected.

Too bad I didn’t do the same thing (escape from my preconceived notions, that is). Also too bad that I didn’t do anything with the conceit of the characters being “ordinary.” Instead, I’ve wound up giving the players to option to boost their scores up a bit to make things more “normal” (for a D&D character, that is).

And the first session was, well, only moderately successful. I hadn’t developed the knack for keeping the action moving nor for seeming authoritative (which is not the same as authoritarian, which is a pretty negative quality in 99.9% of life’s little moments).

Worst of all, it was too guided. An opening session, with new characters in a new world, tends to be a little directed, pushing the characters down a path. And that’s okay. But I didn’t leave nearly enough room for player agency and that’s something I’ve been struggling with. Sometimes my solution becomes almost like those old, Endless Quest books (also published by TSR), where choice becomes “do you want to do A or would you rather do B?” rather than true freedom.

But I had done it. My first campaign, created (though only partially built as yet) from the ground up. A new world, with peoples, nations, and history.

The continent of Loa, home of a small band of (semi) heroic refugees from the now fallen Sunward Empire, which fell, despite the characters’ best efforts, on the first day of the imaginary world’s entrance into the (semi) real world on a Saturday afternoon, in the meeting room of the Alexandria, Virginia branch of the Fraternal Order of Eagles.